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Sri Lanka, 1983: Jude Ratnam was five years old. He fled the massacre of the Tamils instigated by the majority-Sinhalese government on a red train.
Now a filmmaker, he takes the same train from the south to the north of the island.

As he advances, the traces of violence left by the 26-year-old war, which turned the Tamil’s fight for freedom into self-destructive terrorism, pass before his eyes.
Reminiscing about the fighters and Tamil Tigers, he unveils the repressed memories of his compatriots, opening the door to a new era and making peace possible again.

Demons in Paradise is the result of 10 years of work. For the first time, a Tamil documentary filmmaker living in Sri Lanka is showing the civil war from the inside.

Recently, Sri Lanka’s cabinet cleared a proposal to build 6,000 prefabricated houses for war-affected families in the island’s Tamil-majority north and east. What ought to have been a basic, brick-and-mortar effort to rebuild homes has turned out to be a major controversy, as the government appears persistent to push a deal that it alone finds logical.

A story on Burmese Tamil refugees who were displaced to Manipur, India, following a coup in the 1960s that led to race riots against ‘Indians’. Hundreds of Jaffna Tamils, who were brought to Burma as part of the British colonial apparatus, were also affected and returned to Ceylon in the wake of the violence. They are remembered as Rangun Tamils.

« When they reached the border crossing, Burmese soldiers prevented them from entering the country. The Tamils settled in Moreh hoping one day to return to their homeland – but those dreams have never been fulfilled. »

“It is very difficult to keep Rajapaksa out, I would think,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, who runs an election monitoring group and a policy research organization in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, he noted, every recent poll shows Mr. Rajapaksa trailing, and there is “no demonstrable evidence of any kind of swing or shift to him.”

Sri Lankan security forces have continued to torture Tamil detainees even after the election of reformist president Maithripala Sirisena in January, according to a report.

The report, by the UK-based charity Freedom From Torture (FFT) and published on Thursday, comes just four days before critical parliamentary elections on 17 August. Sirisena, elected on a promise to lift government repression, is seeking to prevent a comeback by his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, whose government has been accused of systematic brutality against the country’s Tamils after the military rout of the Tamil Tiger rebels in 2009.

Ordinary folk such as S. Sivanesan, a teacher in a government school in Jaffna, says, “We will vote for candidates who are willing to speak on behalf of the Tamil people and their causes. They should be able to help people affected by the war and not able to resettle in their respective land. That’s our immediate need. It has to be done.”

This is a well-written, timely document which underscores the grave and comprehensive challenges that ethnic Tamils continue to face in post-war Sri Lanka. The detailed accounts of torture and rape are difficult to read, but – aside from the horrific violations recounted – what really stands out is the comprehensive, wide-ranging and pernicious nature of Sri Lanka’s state security apparatus, which continues to operate with impunity.

« A security force insider has told ITJP researchers that military intelligence officials operating from JOSEF camp ‘were actively looking for any Tamils returning home from abroad in order to interrogate them’, since President Maithripala Sirisena was elected to office in 2015. ITJP has recorded eight accounts of torture and abuse that happened after January 8, 2015, the most recent in July 2015. »

This is a well-written, timely document which underscores the grave and comprehensive challenges that ethnic Tamils continue to face in post-war Sri Lanka. The detailed accounts of torture and rape are difficult to read, but – aside from the horrific violations recounted – what really stands out is the comprehensive, wide-ranging and pernicious nature of Sri Lanka’s state security apparatus, which continues to operate with impunity.

« If this decline continues, not only will the terrible misery of war victims multiply; the kind of solution that may be available a few decades from now will be much inferior to what may be available now, and of course incomparably inferior to what might have been available decades earlier. What is required, now as always, is intelligent, principled participation, neither blind acceptance of whatever is offered nor refusal to negotiate. Affluent and well placed Sri Lankan Tamil individuals, especially those in the Diaspora, may contemplate staging yet another boycott, but that will impact cruelly on the vast majority of the Tamils based in this island, of whom over a million are direct or indirect victims of the war. »

« The UN Human Rights Commission’s decision to investigate violations and the huge loss of life during the last months of the war concluded in 2009 was a significant victory for the victims. The dignity of the victims required that the truth must be told without fear or favour, and processes of justice and restoration set in motion. And the wrong was not all on one side. Dignity also demands that we await the verdict of the judges with restraint and reverence for the name of justice. »

« When I heard that the Northern Provincial Council had passed a resolution on Genocide, I put my “head in my hands” again- something I did often during the previous regime. I asked myself, have we gone back to the beginning after all this violence and heartbreak? Tamil politics led by lawyers ( I am a lawyer so this is not said in contempt) has always emphasized legal concepts and theories even if they are far removed from the reality that Tamil people face in their day-to-day lives. We went from “nation” to “separate state”, now we are “two nations in one country”, and suddenly we have sprung the Genocide card which is one of the most difficult international crimes to prove because of its complete reliance on the “intent’ of any government in question. »

The stage is now set for a resurgence in India-Sri Lanka relations. This will depend on dynamic leadership in India and Sri Lanka. India will certainly look forward to regaining lost ground in Sri Lanka and should therefore re-engage Colombo as a vibrant partner and a reliable neighbour.